Mona Lisa Blossoming

Chapter Ten

I moved down the hallway with conscious care, feeling tense, overripe, as if all it would take would be the brush of another's skin against mine to set me alight. Need pulsed in me like a living thing, and my clothes were a sudden unwanted, unbearable abrasion. With each step, fabric brushed my erect nipples, pressed against my swollen secret lips. I was hungry to be filled. Aching to be taken.

I rounded a corner. From the darkness, a shadow detached itself and stepped forward. There'd been no heartbeat to warn me. No breath to hear. I halted.

"Mona Lisa." It was Halcyon, my golden-skinned Demon Prince. His eyes were the color of my favorite weakness, chocolate. I'd forgotten that chocolate could melt, that it could become hot and steamy, liquid with desire. That it could boil over with want. He held out one elegant hand to me and that inviting gesture spoke more clearly than words for him. I know you need, I know you want. Let me fill you, let me please you. Let me love you.

For one weak moment, I was tempted. His utter need called out to me, it always had. But never had it drawn me more than now, when my body wanted him so. When filling his need would quench the ache within mine as well. So unbearably tempted…

But somehow I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I can't."

Never had I seen his eyes swirl with so much emotion. "Will there ever be a time when you think you can?" he asked softly.

"Halcyon," I said gently, trembling with the constraint I forced upon my willful body, "you cannot wait, hoping for that."

"Then why did you wish me to stay?"

Good question, when before I had asked him to stay away. No wonder he was confused. I was giving him mixed messages. I struggled to find the right words to express myself. But, dear God in heaven, it was so hard to do that when my body was literally throbbing in weeping need.

Words spilled out: Truth. "I'm selfish. I want to keep your friendship. You are very special and dear to me, Halcyon."

"More than a friend, but less than a lover."

"Yes." Then more softly, "I want us to be your family."

He looked at me, so still and quiet, though his eyes swirled with emotion. "You have a most generous heart."

"I am sorry I cannot offer you more." And I truly was.

"So am I." He looked at me with those chocolate eyes as I carefully eased past him, taking care that our bodies did not touch.

I took one shaky step away from him, then another.

"We both know I could just take you," he said quietly. "And that you would enjoy it."

"I know." And it wasn't just his superior strength. His mental powers were even greater. He had the ability to cloud my mind and lure me with the promised pleasure of his flesh. With a simple flexing of will, he could become so lushly sensual, making one crave for him. Fact or figment of my imagination, I did not know. The effect had been scarily real. With little effort, he could become the embodiment of pure carnal pleasure. Irresistible. And I'd had only a tiny taste of what he could do.

"But you are too honorable for that," I said.

"For now." It was a quiet, simple warning.

I backed up until I pressed against the wall. Tearing my eyes from his, I turned the corner and almost ran from my lonely Demon Prince.

And both of us knew that I did so only because he allowed me to.

My breath shook as I reached the entrance hall. I leaped up the staircase with impassioned need and turned down the west wing, my senses already having found that which I sought. I stopped before the door half a corridor away from my own bedroom. The other room directly across it was empty. But not this one. Not this one.

The cool brass knob turned beneath my hand, and I entered, the heavy oak door shutting behind me.

The room was cool and dark, generous in size, spacious in feel like the rest of the house. A large bed dominated the room but my eyes were drawn to the windows. They were flung open to let in the night. Amber stood framed before them, looking out, his hands braced on the sill, his back to me, still as a statue under the moon's soft, glowing shine.

My swift feet were suddenly riveted to the floor at how he looked. Like a marble masterpiece chiseled by an old master, like an ancient god of war. Beautiful strength, brutish power. Only pants covered him. His feet were naked. The muscles of his bare back were tense, sharply defined, inviting one to trace each hollow dip and smooth rise. The deep swells of his arms were beckoning curves, and the tapering V of his waist drew one's attention and appreciation down to his tight, firm buttocks, hard as rock. But rock cannot be punctured by teeth. Rock did not taste sweet, did not bleed. I wanted to mark him there with my teeth, with my love bite as I had marked Gryphon.

Amber turned slowly and faced me, and as enticing as the view from behind was, the front was even better. Even more interesting curves to explore here: the thick powerful mounds of his chest, the ridged flatness of his belly, the enticing fullness of his long, thick groin. His broad cheeks were slashed with color and his eyes burned amber yellow, glittering, almost glowing. His nostrils flared wide as he scented me, scenting my need, scenting my arousal. His chest moved, drawing it deep into his lungs.

"Amber," I whispered and he came to me silently, with sure purpose and silent tread, unhurried. I waited for him, my heart pounding, my body yearning, unbearably tight. Aching. His big hands reached out to me and I almost cried with relief when he finally touched me… only to turn me sideways. I saw then what I hadn't seen when I first entered. A standing floor mirror, full-length and oval. But it wasn't the lovely cherry finish that I noticed. It was the image reflected back in its flawless mirrored surface. Us.

I wasn't one to spend much time gazing at myself. I knew what I looked like. Common brown eyes and straight brown hair so dark that it looked black. Not ugly. Not stunning. Pretty, if one were generous and I was helped kindly by makeup.

My body was just as common. A little on the tall side at five feet eight, slender but muscled, more athlete than centerfold. Far from lush. But it was a body that had served me well; I was happy with it. The only thing unusual about me was my eyes. They tilted up exotically at the ends. Almond eyes. Cat eyes. Other than that, I was just average, a simple fact I had long ago accepted and was comfortable with. My men were the beautiful ones.

I looked away from the mirror, started to turn back to Amber, but his large hand gently turned my face out again as he stepped forward, so that I was pressed with my back against his chest. "Watch," he rumbled in his deep welling voice, and a wave of trembling heat washed over me. I shivered with excitement, with embarrassment as I looked at him in the mirror. "You listened."

"And learned." The deep vibrations of the words rolled from the barrel of his chest into me, and plucked taut invisible strings of desire within me.

"You like to watch," he rumbled. "Watch us."

Though I was on the tall side for a woman, standing in front of Amber I seemed tiny, petite, my head coming only to his shoulders. He was a whole head taller than I, and so wide across that he seemed to encompass me. I looked delicate, fragile in his arms, my white skin somehow whiter, softer against the hardness of him. His brown hair was ashen silver under the moonshine, while mine was darkened to pure midnight blackness. We were a contrast of colors and textures.

As if cast under a spell, I watched as he lifted his large, broad hand and spread it across my upper chest, almost like a claiming, his fingerspan reaching from my one shoulder to the other, sitting like a heavy solid weight upon me, loosening my knees and weakening my neck so that it fell back to loll helplessly against his shoulder. My eyes grew heavy-lidded, and yet I still watched, unable to tear my eyes away as he slowly unbuttoned my shirt, as he deliberately spread it open and slid it off me in a sensuous glide. I watched my chest lift and fall in quickened tempo, saw my breath catch as I felt him unhook my bra from behind and brush it down my arms, pushing it slowly down and down until it slipped free past my fingertips and fell to the floor with a white twin-cupped flutter. I closed my eyes against the sight of my naked breasts.

His hands lifted away.

"Watch." His rough command sent a trickle of wetness sliding down my leg. Only when I opened my eyes once more did he touch me again.

One big hand came to splay wide and open across my quivering belly. Deliberately, he pulled the button loose from my jeans, pulled down the zipper. A gentle push and the denim pooled about my feet. With his hands swallowing up my waist, he lifted me, freeing my feet, and with stunning ease carried me a few steps closer to the mirror. Languor made heavy my limbs and melting passion stunned me helpless in his hands, like a pliant doll with which he could do anything he pleased. I moaned at the thought, at the feeling of total surrender. His yellow glowing eyes burned me in the mirror, ravaged me fiercely with his restrained desire. One big hand slowly slid downward to my last remaining article of clothing. He cupped me lightly and fingered the wetness of the cotton crotch, making me tremble. Making me cry out as with one sharp, violent tug, he ripped it from me. I trembled helplessly in his arms, shocked and dazed.

"Put your arms around my neck," he growled roughly, his voice low and thick.

Biting my lip, I lifted my arms up above and behind me, wrapping them around his neck. I looked like a Christmas ornament dangling from his neck, and felt like one—on total display.

"Spread your legs."

Quivering, I jerkily obeyed, moving my feet wider apart, and trembled at what I saw in the mirror. I looked like a wanton stranger, naked and exposed while Amber stood large and powerful behind me, still wearing pants. Feet apart, arms lifted, my body was completely opened to him, to his body, his hands, his eyes. Shame twined with excitement, bedeviling, writhed like a living snake within me, making me shudder, making my small breasts swell even more, elongating my nipples, wetting my thighs with more rivulets of desire.

I could not bare to look at myself any longer. My eyes squeezed shut as I gasped in air.

"Open your eyes, sweetheart." Roughly tender, but still a command.

My eyes fluttered open.

"Watch me make you come," he whispered in a voice dark as midnight, coarse as gravel.

I almost exploded just hearing him say that. And then I did as one big callused finger touched me, found my swollen little pearl and stroked it. I lit up like a firecracker, spilling the room with light. Then I sparked and burst in air. I trembled and shuddered and cried as I exploded, and then cried again as I watched him sink that big finger back into me. Watched the long length disappear up into my body as I twitched and jerked. I watched him—and felt him—slide that fat finger in and out of me, pumping me, prolonging my orgasm, milking my release to its very last convulsive drop.

I collapsed against him, stunned, amazed that Amber was doing this. Playing me like this. So easily, so confidently, so masterfully. And he wasn't done.

He slid his broad finger, covered with my juice, out of my grasping sheath and sucked the wetness of my pleasure into his mouth, his brilliant eyes a yellow blaze. "You taste like passion," he said, and I quivered and almost came again.

"Amber." It was a plea, a hoarse demand.

He stepped back and I gently swayed, barely able to stand on my own. Carefully, he eased down the zipper of his pants and freed his erection. It sprang out heavy, thick and long, the engorged crown crimson with heated arousal, liquid excitement leaking from its tip.

It looked happy in its freedom, bobbing in eagerness as he kicked out of his pants.

"Kneel down," he rasped harshly.

My heart, only just slowing, kicked into high gear again as I sank down onto my knees.

He positioned me so that I was turned sideways to the mirror, so that I could watch both of us in profile. "Brace your hands in front of you."

My eyes glued to his in the mirror as I bent forward and braced myself on hands and knees before him like a supplicant, like a sacrifice, like prey he had chased and brought down. He stood behind me for a long, long moment, a towering figure, both of us breathing hard. Then he knelt behind me, and that part of him that would enter me was tall and upright, like a thick heavy pole jutting obliquely out from his body.

"Watch," he growled.

Just that one word and like a conditioned animal, my womb tightened, my sheath shivered, my nipples tingled, and all the muscles of my body clenched.

"Open wider."

"Oh, God." I bit back a whimper and spread my knees wider. Conversely, the opening of my legs made me feel more empty, more hollow inside.

"Keep your eyes open. Watch us." With jaw clenched, he guided himself to my dripping, shadowy cleft that was achingly, throbbingly hungry once again.

I felt him push against my dewy nether lips, and in the mirror, I saw him sink and push and grunt his way into me. Invading me. In and in. Another thick inch. Then another. Pull back, push in harder, with more force, fighting and pushing his way inside me despite my wetness.

He felt massive. I felt full, lodged, wonderfully crammed.

He halted halfway in.

"No," I cried, straining back against him. "Don't stop."

"What do you want?"

"All of you."

He continued his slow, deep plunge. I groaned and panted and pushed my hips back against him and gasped, "Yes… more… oh, God! Oh, God!.. Please, more…"

The light came like an exploding essence called out from our bodies, so blindingly bright that I had to squint my eyes to see. In the reflected glass, we looked like angels aglow. Doing a most unangelic thing.

One heavy grunting thrust with his hips and he pushed all the way in, nudging against my womb, and I went off again in a second glorious release, crying out, gasping, spasming around him, squeezing him so tight that he groaned. Feeling so weak and trembly that I collapsed onto my elbows, my cheek resting against the floor. When the waves of passion finally eased to lap in gentle swells against the shore of me, my lashes lifted once more and I saw his bright amber eyes watching me in the mirror, his face tight, his body tense, and I realized that he was still full and hard within me.

"Watch," he said hoarsely as he began to move.

I gasped, shook my head, and cried out, knowing what he wanted and knowing I could not take more. "No… no…" My body twitched and jerked, reacting beyond my control. I was too sensitive. It was too soon. Too much. I sobbed and jerked forward to dislodge him, to break free of his overwhelming fullness. He grabbed my hips, stopping my escape, pulling me back with surging force against him, sliding back in.

I shook my head wildly. "No, I can't." Tears trickled down my cheeks.

Amber's arm clamped diagonally across the center of my chest, lifting me up and back against him. The other hand gripped my hip in an unbreakable iron grip, keeping us together.

"Shhh," he crooned soothingly. "I won't move. Just let me stay inside you."

I calmed at his promise, didn't fight him, but couldn't stop trembling. My body was on overload, my swollen tissues quivering at the slightest movement. Even just the thick unmoving presence of him deep within me, stretching my screamingly sensitive nerve endings was only just barely tolerable. As long as he didn't move.

He held me like that, both of us on our knees, my back pressed tight against his chest, my bottom snugged tight in an unbreakable line against his groin as I knelt in the Vee of his spread knees. His thighs were like massive tree trunks surrounding me, his arm a heavy restraining weight against my chest, caging me captive against him. I was impaled by him. Stretched by him.

When I had quieted, when I had stopped trembling, when my tenseness had eased and I tiredly relaxed back against him, letting him support my full weight, he nuzzled the top of my head with his chin. "You're beautiful," he murmured.

"No, I'm not."

"You are."

"Only in your eyes."

"Then see yourself through my eyes. I'm going to turn us," and with that warning, he shifted us slowly, carefully edging around until we faced the mirror once again. The move was surprisingly easy for him to accomplish, and no effort on my part. He just pressed me tight against him. His knees made two gentle surges that jangled my nerves so that I tensed, but not enough for me to fight him. It was the sight of us in the mirror that made me gasp.

He was like a pagan god of carnal desire, naked, gloriously pow-erful, holding a delicate maiden in his arms, surrounding her, almost encompassing her. She—me—looked so much smaller. Fragile and helpless in his massive arms, against that hard body that swelled with brutal strength, that bulged with muscles around her like a living, imprisoning tower of flesh. And yet she leaned back against him trustingly. And he held her, cradled her, restrained her tenderly, protectively in his arms, even as his eyes burned with the fierceness of desire, and sparked hotly with unspent passion. The contrast, the trust, was a beautiful image, innocent even. From the front, you couldn't see the hot, hard length of him buried snug within me. All you saw was the sleepy, sensual languor of my eyelids, the light rose color of passion—either spent or rising, in this case both—dusting my face, my neck, my chest. And I was beautiful like that, my lips red with passion, my eyelids drooping with sensual languor. My breasts slight, delicate, high and firm, accented by my narrow waist and the feminine flare of my hips. My dark brown nipples were jutting peaks, crying for attention. The hair between my legs was dark and enticing, moist from my passion.

Just the picture of us like that—spent passion, unspent passion, stirring passion all twirling, swirling around us—was like an invisible caress. Pleasure stirred within me once more, and the liquid heat of my renewed desire anointed him inside me. The knowledge of what was beyond that mirrored picture, what lay lodged thick and heavy and strumming within me like a dormant threat, was a subtle stimulation. The outer wetness of my triangle grew as I bathed him within, making him groan softly, pleasurably. Making him throb and jerk in involuntary upward surges within me, a stirring, quiescent beast.

"Watch us."

His words were like a hot pulse that quickened my womb, tightening me around him even more.

"Dear Goddess, you hold me so sweetly," he muttered, his chest rising and falling, lifting us both to his rhythm. He was like a giant sea of muscle surrounding me, within me. And I gave myself up to him. Floated in his pulsing hardness.

He growled deep in his chest, his brilliant feral eyes locked with mine as he sensed my acquiescence, the giving of myself to him wholly in whatever he wished to do.

But all that he wished to do was smooth his hands up the narrow flatness of my belly to rest just beneath my aching breasts, just barely touching the soft undersides with his thick fingers, his longs thumbs bracketing the sides of my breasts. And then stopping there, holding those big hands still, leaving my nipples straining, aching, quivering to be touched.

"Amber," I whispered, whimpered, my hands coming to rest with hot need upon his wrists, my chest arching forward into his teasing, not quite cupping hands.

"What do you desire?" His breath was a hot stirring caress against my ear, making me shiver.

"Touch me."

"Where?"

A soft whimper of need. A gasped confession. "My nipples."

"They're beautiful, your nipples. So sensitive, so responsive." His voice was like dark, rough honey. "Ask me to touch your beautiful nipples."

I rolled my head back against him in denial, in embarrassment.

His forefingers moved in gentle strokes, teasing the underside of my breasts. Nice but not where I wanted those fingers.

"Say it," he whispered.

I shook my head but my want was too much. "Amber, please touch my… beautiful nipples." My face flamed. But as his hands moved up and his fingers brushed my aching nipples, embarrassment faded beneath the hot sway of passion.

"Watch how beautiful you are in my hands." And I did. I watched as he molded me, stroked me, gently squeezed and tugged on my nipples, elongating the dark rosy tips even as I felt him elongating within me. I felt the heavy beat of his heart against my back, felt a second echoing heartbeat within me. My tightly stretched secret flesh felt each quiver, each dewy drip of excitement that leaked from him, felt each lifting flex of his heavy pole.

I wriggled against him, letting him know that I would welcome his movement now. But he only squeezed my nipples hard, firmly. Rolled them with his rough fingertips. And continued to tug on the sensitive tips, pulling them out. Pulling them until they were almost obscenely long, jutting out like little pointy fingers.

"So beautiful," he murmured. "So incredibly responsive. Feel what I feel when I'm inside you."

His hands snaked down my belly, dipped gently between my stretched lips into my moist cavity with cramming fingers, feeling where we met, where he filled me. A few deep feathery caresses and then his hands left me and returned to my breasts.

With his first two fingers and thumbs creating little sheaths, with the moisture from my own vagina, he moved his fingers up and down the length of my stretched out nipples, tugging, pulling, squeezing the sensitive points, pumping the fuller areolas with a sliding movement. Squeezing then releasing.

"One more time," he rumbled like deep thunder. "Come for me."

He tugged with sudden fierce force and squeezed my nipples achingly hard. So hard that pain became sharp, almost unbearable pleasure, and I cried out and came, singing, zinging with passion like an instrument that he played at will. I convulsed deeply within, clamping tightly around his thick, throbbing pole, and like a silent mirroring echo, his fingers squeezed tightly, convulsively around my nipples. I convulsed and convulsed, waves of almost painful pleasure spreading hot and pervasive as a scorching wash of heat spilled through me. I came on a release harder, more violent, than the other two that had come before, feeling as if I was tearing apart inside, or trying to tear him apart. Trying to squeeze him dry, grind him flat. And the squeeze and press and pull on my nipples was a silent echo of what I did to him inside.

Amber groaned and shuddered and heaved as if I were hurting him, and maybe I was. His fingers were so tightly, ferociously clamped around my nipples. And I couldn't stop myself, couldn't control my inner muscles. Could only spasm and squeeze and clench him in my violent rolling climax until I freed his inner tears and he was crying within me, gushing within me hotly in a fountain of release that splashed with wet heat against my contracting womb.

When the light ebbed and our shudders ceased, when only little ripples of pleasure flowed through us now and again as if reluctant to leave us fully, he let my sore and sensitive nipples slip from his wet fingers and eased from my body. He carried me to his bed, and pulled me against the bigness of him, gathering me up in his arms, nuzzling the tendrils clinging damply to my forehead.

"God, Amber," I muttered, puffing hot breaths against his throat.

"What is it?" he rumbled.

"Nothing. Just… God."

Against me, beside me, I felt him smile.